The Circular Staircase

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER XXXI

  BETWEEN TWO FIREPLACES

  What with the excitement of the discovery, the walk home under thestars in wet shoes and draggled skirts, and getting up-stairs andundressed without rousing Liddy, I was completely used up. What to dowith my boots was the greatest puzzle of all, there being no place inthe house safe from Liddy, until I decided to slip upstairs the nextmorning and drop them into the hole the "ghost" had made in thetrunk-room wall.

  I went asleep as soon as I reached this decision, and in my dreams Ilived over again the events of the night. Again I saw the group aroundthe silent figure on the grass, and again, as had happened at thegrave, I heard Alex's voice, tense and triumphant:

  "Then we've got them," he said. Only, in my dreams, he said it overand over until he seemed to shriek it in my ears.

  I wakened early, in spite of my fatigue, and lay there thinking. Whowas Alex? I no longer believed that he was a gardener. Who was theman whose body we had resurrected? And where was Paul Armstrong?Probably living safely in some extraditionless country on the fortunehe had stolen. Did Louise and her mother know of the shameful andwicked deception? What had Thomas known, and Mrs. Watson? Who wasNina Carrington?

  This last question, it seemed to me, was answered. In some way thewoman had learned of the substitution, and had tried to use herknowledge for blackmail. Nina Carrington's own story died with her,but, however it happened, it was clear that she had carried herknowledge to Halsey the afternoon Gertrude and I were looking for cluesto the man I had shot on the east veranda. Halsey had been half crazedby what he heard; it was evident that Louise was marrying Doctor Walkerto keep the shameful secret, for her mother's sake. Halsey, alwaysreckless, had gone at once to Doctor Walker and denounced him. Therehad been a scene, and he left on his way to the station to meet andnotify Mr. Jamieson of what he had learned. The doctor was activementally and physically. Accompanied perhaps by Riggs, who had shownhimself not overscrupulous until he quarreled with his employer, he hadgone across to the railroad embankment, and, by jumping in front of thecar, had caused Halsey to swerve. The rest of the story we knew.

  That was my reconstructed theory of that afternoon and evening: it wasalmost correct--not quite.

  There was a telegram that morning from Gertrude.

  "Halsey conscious and improving. Probably home in day or so. GERTRUDE."

  With Halsey found and improving in health, and with at last somethingto work on, I began that day, Thursday, with fresh courage. As Mr.Jamieson had said, the lines were closing up. That I was to be caughtand almost finished in the closing was happily unknown to us all.

  It was late when I got up. I lay in my bed, looking around the fourwalls of the room, and trying to imagine behind what one of them asecret chamber might lie. Certainly, in daylight, Sunnyside deservedits name: never was a house more cheery and open, less sinister ingeneral appearance. There was not a corner apparently that was notopen and above-board, and yet, somewhere behind its handsomely paperedwalls I believed firmly that there lay a hidden room, with all thepossibilities it would involve.

  I made a mental note to have the house measured during the day, todiscover any discrepancy between the outer and inner walls, and I triedto recall again the exact wording of the paper Jamieson had found.

  The slip had said "chimney." It was the only clue, and a house aslarge as Sunnyside was full of them. There was an open fireplace in mydressing-room, but none in the bedroom, and as I lay there, lookingaround, I thought of something that made me sit up suddenly. Thetrunk-room, just over my head, had an open fireplace and a brickchimney, and yet, there was nothing of the kind in my room. I got outof bed and examined the opposite wall closely. There was apparently noflue, and I knew there was none in the hall just beneath. The housewas heated by steam, as I have said before. In the living-room was ahuge open fireplace, but it was on the other side.

  Why did the trunk-room have both a radiator and an open fireplace?Architects were not usually erratic! It was not fifteen minutes beforeI was up-stairs, armed with a tape-measure in lieu of a foot-rule,eager to justify Mr. Jamieson's opinion of my intelligence, and firmlyresolved not to tell him of my suspicion until I had more than theoryto go on. The hole in the trunk-room wall still yawned there, betweenthe chimney and the outer wall. I examined it again, with no newresult. The space between the brick wall and the plaster and lath one,however, had a new significance. The hole showed only one side of thechimney, and I determined to investigate what lay in the space on theother side of the mantel.

  I worked feverishly. Liddy had gone to the village to market, it beingher firm belief that the store people sent short measure unless shewatched the scales, and that, since the failure of the Traders' Bank,we must watch the corners; and I knew that what I wanted to do must bedone before she came back. I had no tools, but after rummaging aroundI found a pair of garden scissors and a hatchet, and thus armed, I setto work. The plaster came out easily: the lathing was more obstinate.It gave under the blows, only to spring back into place again, and thenecessity for caution made it doubly hard.

  I had a blister on my palm when at last the hatchet went through andfell with what sounded like the report of a gun to my overstrainednerves. I sat on a trunk, waiting to hear Liddy fly up the stairs,with the household behind her, like the tail of a comet. But nothinghappened, and with a growing feeling of uncanniness I set to workenlarging the opening.

  The result was absolutely nil. When I could hold a lighted candle inthe opening, I saw precisely what I had seen on the other side of thechimney--a space between the true wall and the false one, possiblyseven feet long and about three feet wide. It was in no sense of theword a secret chamber, and it was evident it had not been disturbedsince the house was built. It was a supreme disappointment.

  It had been Mr. Jamieson's idea that the hidden room, if there was one,would be found somewhere near the circular staircase. In fact, I knewthat he had once investigated the entire length of the clothes chute,hanging to a rope, with this in view. I was reluctantly about toconcede that he had been right, when my eyes fell on the mantel andfireplace. The latter had evidently never been used: it was closedwith a metal fire front, and only when the front refused to move, andinvestigation showed that it was not intended to be moved, did myspirits revive.

  I hurried into the next room. Yes, sure enough, there was a similarmantel and fireplace there, similarly closed. In both rooms thechimney flue extended well out from the wall. I measured with thetape-line, my hands trembling so that I could scarcely hold it. Theyextended two feet and a half into each room, which, with the three feetof space between the two partitions, made eight feet to be accountedfor. Eight feet in one direction and almost seven in the other--what achimney it was!

  But I had only located the hidden room. I was not in it, and no amountof pressing on the carving of the wooden mantels, no search of thefloors for loose boards, none of the customary methods availed at all.That there was a means of entrance, and probably a simple one, I couldbe certain. But what? What would I find if I did get in? Was thedetective right, and were the bonds and money from the Traders' Bankthere? Or was our whole theory wrong? Would not Paul Armstrong havetaken his booty with him? If he had not, and if Doctor Walker was inthe secret, he would have known how to enter the chimney room.Then--who had dug the other hole in the false partition?